Useful Notes Christianity Discussion

Why was the "Myths & Misconception" section of Christianity or Abrahamic Religions in general removed from their articles? I know that this section use to exist and now all of a sudden it is gone. Explanation, please?

I noticed that there is no description of Methodism under the "Protestant" section of the "Denominations" part. I'd add it myself, but as a young adult who grew up attending a Methodist church almost exclusively, I'm a little fuzzy on the details of exactly how Methodism differs from other denominations. I'm also worried that I might mix up ideals that are common to the entire denomination with attitudes specific to my congregation. It might be better if someone with more experience took care of it.

Perhaps I'm missing a context-thing but "Messiah" comes from the Hebrew term for "annointed" and does not always refer to a Jewish leader of King David's line. In fact, King Cyrus the Great (the Persian king who defeated the Babylonians and freed the Jews) is referred to as "Messiah" - if I recall correctly, in the Book of Isaiah.) Cyrus was not Jewish at all.

shiro_okami

02:55:34 PM May 9th 2011

Yes, you did miss the context. While other people in The Bible are called "messiahs", such as Moses, the "Messiah" only refers to God's son as the saviour of Israel and the rest of the human race, who was promised and prophesied to be a descendant of King David, and who Christians believe was Jesus.

SchizoTechnician

07:57:22 PM May 9th 2011edited by SchizoTechnician

Technically speaking, the "God's son" bit is original to the New Testament. The promised and prophesied The Messiah was simply described in the prophesies as a savior of the line of David sent by God (a savior from Earthly tyranny and suffering, at that), degree of relation and soul-related duties not mentioned, although there was something about all the dead who were properly buried rising.

Regarding the claim that Gnostic Christians outnumbered orthodox Christians for the first several centuries, is there any legitimate evidence of this other than The Da Vinci Code, and History Channel "History"?

SomeGuy

02:29:00 PM Sep 9th 2010

The only source I could find crashed my browser, so I'm going to assume this isn't true until someone cites it. Section edited.

Brit Bllt, your edit summary, besides being redundant, is using false allegations of "Take That" to justify censorship. The widespread inconsistency of Christianity is a fundamental aspect of how it is practiced, and to leave it out of the article is absurd. The current wording of the article is blatantly ridiculous and contradictory: "They claim that the Bible is the ultimate and only necessary authority for knowing how to live a Christian life, but also say that it is largely up to the individual to interpret the Bible's instructions as to how to live their own life". If the believe that it is up to the individual to interpret the Bible, then obviously they do NOT believe that the Bible is the only authority, because they believe that their interpretation is ALSO an authority.

BritBllt

11:40:22 AM Aug 11th 2010

Dude, your very same edit called the Bible "morally reprehensible", and Fast Eddie himself had to nuke it. This is not the place for a one-man campaign against Christianity. Every religion, philosophy and belief system covered by a Useful Notes page deserves to be treated with respect and taken on its own level. The page is supposed to be an useful explanation for people not familiar with the subject, not a confusing Wiki Schizophrenia argument about its validity, and certainly not a place to throw around It Just Bugs Me! issues about inconsistency. As for the above complaint, that doesn't make sense - of course "interpreting" the Bible is a prerequisite to accepting its authority, just like deciding what you think of anything requires interpreting it first. Human beings have minds. The only way to remove interpretation as a factor is to somehow upload the information like a program directly into people's brains.

anon0794

04:53:58 PM Aug 11th 2010

No, I called the Bible "morally reprehensible" in another edit. Your comment "this is not a place for a one-man campaign against Christianity" makes no sense. First, this is not a campaign against Christianity. This is simply stating true things. If someone finds their religion being accurately described to be insulting, then perhaps they should find another religion. And would you feel better about it if there were several men engaged in this? This is a blatant argument ad populum.
"Every religion, philosophy and belief system covered by a Useful Notes page deserves to be treated with respect and taken on its own level". BULLSHIT!!! I went to the index page, and I found such topics as "Spanish Inquisition" and "Hitler" covered. Does Hitler deserve to be treated with respect? My edits have been presenting useful information. The idea that I am obligated to not mention it simply because Christians find it insulting is absurd. If "treated with respect" means giving an honest account, then I have done that. If it means "avoiding mentioning anything they don't like mentioned", then the idea that Christians deserve to be "treated with respect" is UTTER CRAP.
"not a confusing Wiki Schizophrenia argument about its validity"
My edits are not creating wiki schizophrenia. If it looks like schizophrenia, it is because Christianity itself is schizophrenic.
This isn't an "it bugs ME" issue. The fact that a billion people claim to follow a book that calls for the murder of homosexuals is something that bugs EVERYONE that doesn't have something seriously wrong with them.
"As for the above complaint, that doesn't make sense - of course "interpreting" the Bible is a prerequisite to accepting its authority just like deciding what you think of anything requires interpreting it first."
There are many different interpretations of Quantum Mechanics, but all of them agree on what the result is when an electron goes through a double slit. When "interpretation" results in such widely divergent views as there of the Bible, when "interpretation" allows a person to read the rules "Don't eat pork product or engage in homosexuality", and "interpret" that as "Don't engage in homosexuality, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with pork products", when it's impossible, simply from reading the Bible, to know what Christians will "interpret" it as, it's just plain ridiculous to say that the Bible is the ultimate authority. What Christians have done to the Bible is the equivalent of buying a can of alphabet soup, arranging the letters to spell out "kill the homos", and then claiming that their homophobia is not due to their personal feelings, but simply following the views of Campbell Soup Company.

anon0794

04:54:57 PM Aug 11th 2010

Brit Bllt wrote:
I'm not seeing the point of this, other than a protracted Take That at Christians for allegedly not knowing their religion, added as part of a whole slew of Take Thats that have already been deleted. Saying that Jesus is not the Messiah on the Christianity page is just jaw-dropping Flame Bait (claiming that he's not the Messiah presupposes that a non-Christian intepretation of the Messianic propheies is true, which is little different than saying that Jesus isn't God because non-Christian texts say he's not). As for the rest, some of it's flatout nitpicking (the Decalogue is a pre-Christian concept and it's very simple to go to Exodus 20:2 - 17 and see how they're logically divided up into 10 rules), some of it's inferred rather than said, some of it's open to interpretation and some of it's Word Of Dante. But really, does anyone besides a Jeopardy contestent care that the three kings and three wise men are conflated, or that Lucifer was originally a name for the planet Venus? Those aren't useful notes about Christianity; they add nothing to an understanding of the belief system itself.

anon0794

05:15:35 PM Aug 11th 2010

Since Brit Bllt apparently was unable to find the discussion page, and instead posted the above in his edit "summary", I have reposted it above.

"I'm not seeing the point of this, other than a protracted Take That at Christians for allegedly not knowing their religion"
The term "take that" doesn't mean "anything I don't like". That Christians don't know their own religion is not "alleged". When Christianity claims that it is simply following the Bible, the fact that Christianity has accrued a wide variety of beliefs that are not from the Bible is relevant.

"Saying that Jesus is not the Messiah on the Christianity page is just jaw-dropping Flame Bait"
If people engage in flaming over this, the fault is theirs, not mine.

"claiming that he's not the Messiah presupposes that a non-Christian intepretation of the Messianic propheies is true"
It isn't a matter of "interpretation". Jesus flat-out did not fulfill the Messianaic prophecies.

"which is little different than saying that Jesus isn't God because non-Christian texts say he's not"
As I explained in my edit, "Messiah" is a Jewish term, and hence is, by DEFINITION, whatever the Jews says it is. "God" is not a Jewish term, and thus your argument is, as the kids say, UTTER FAIL.

"As for the rest, some of it's flatout nitpicking (the Decalogue is a pre-Christian concept and it's very simple to go to Exodus 20:2 - 17 and see how they're logically divided up into 10 rules)"
Given the fervor Christians exhibit in putting up the "Ten Commandments" and insisting that it is the foundation of Western Civilization, it's not "nit-picking" to point out that that the BIBLE put kosher laws, which Christians have "interpreted" as not being part of their religion, in a MORE PROMINENT position. The Bible does not divide Exodus 20:2-17 into ten rules; that is a result of more "interpretation", and the what the "correct" division is depends on who you ask.

"some of it's inferred rather than said some of it's open to interpretation and some of it's Word Of Dante"
In other words, not in the Bible.

"But really, does anyone besides a Jeopardy contestent care that the three kings and three wise men are conflated, or that Lucifer was originally a name for the planet Venus?"
Are you really claiming that nothing that could be classified as "trivia" is in, or is to be, in this article?

jabbe3001

01:35:09 PM Aug 15th 2010

Umm... This article is useful notes on Christianity! Not on Judaism or Islam. If you want to make note of the different views of Jesus in Judaism and Islam, do not do so in a take-that fashion. There are different views and interpretations of the Bible: from the Catholic/E. Orthodox view that the Bible is the Word of God and an important component of Sacred Tradition, to the Lutheran view of "norma normans", to the Methodist Quadrangle, to the Mormon view that is the the Word of God as far as it has been translated properly. It is a gross over-simplification to say that Christians read the Bible to support the doctrines they like and ignore the doctrines they don't like.

Some traditions have the view of Dispensations, with Covenants of different time periods having different requirements for salvation. In addition there are several passages which seem to indicate that the dietary and ceremonial laws no longer apply (Acts 10, Matthew 15), and that the spirit of the law is more important than the letter (Romans 2). On the other hand, every one of the 10 commandments (which most Christians consider to be the moral law) with the possible exception of honoring the Sabbath, is rehashed in the New Testament, and is given further categorization by Jesus who said that all laws hung on the two laws "Love God" and "Love your neighbor." As for whether Jesus fulfilled the messianic prophecies, obviously most Christians are of the opinion that he fulfilled most of them in his first coming and will fulfill the rest in his second coming. Christianity grew out of the context of Hellenistic Judaism, so they have just as much claim to the word "Messiah" as some Hassidic Jews do for Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

anon0794

05:10:59 PM Sep 1st 2010

If Christians do not want discussions of their religion to include discussions of Judaism, then they shouldn't hijack Jewish concepts. As I said before, and apparently I need to say again and again, dismissing a contrary point of view as simply a "take that" is wildly uncivil. It is clear to any objective observer that the primary factor in determining whether a Christian will accept a Biblical passage is whether they agree with it. A simplification, maybe, but not an over-simplification, and certainly not a gross one. When people spend years at seminaries learning about Biblical scholarship, and dismiss anyone who has not had comparable education as unqualified to make judgments of Biblical exegesis, the idea that Christianity is based on a plain reading of the Bible is really quite dead and buried.

flyingferret

01:51:27 PM Dec 3rd 2010edited by flyingferret

As a Charismatic Catholic, I listen to the Pope and saints in many respects as well as the BIBLE. When anon0794 said "a billion people claim to follow a book that calls for the murder of homosexuals", anon0794 was not being perfectly accurate. The BIBLE is explicitly against men raping men. This was explicitly noted mostly due to this being a common war crime at the time that part of the BIBLE was written. For the record, I am a (bisexual) Charismatic Catholic and do not believe that anyone is perverted, being controlled by demons, or going to go to Hell because they are attracted to the same sex.

SquigPie

12:48:54 AM Jan 19th 2011

TL;DR

warlord396

02:45:25 PM May 9th 2011

I (a baptist) agree, mostly, with flyingferret. while there is something in Leviticus about men lying with men, that was more likely written for the time, like Jesus telling all of his disciples to carry swords

inmydreams

08:46:18 PM Sep 7th 2011

I believe what may be more "wildly uncivil" is using a useful notes section to make claims entirely contrary to the central tenants of essentially every branch of Christianity. anon, such claims clearly do not belong and are obvious flame bait.

they are written almost exclusively from protestant viewpoints. (esp. the "salvation" parts)

jabbe3001

10:54:39 PM Jul 5th 2010

I agree. When it said it would use those basic points which a majority of groups agree on, I expected to see something closer to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy as those are the largest Christian Churches and make up more than half of all Christians!

I tried to correct it without disturbing too much of the surrounding text. If it's still to protestant, or if I misrepresented a teaching of the Church in trying to preserve the structure, feel free to correct it.

76.214.43.101

02:55:25 PM Nov 30th 2010

There's an error in a sub-point of the basics. Jesus never praised giving up marriage for ministry. That was Paul, and he specifically separated his point from the ones that had "come from the Lord". I'd fix it myself, but the site won't let me for some reason. It says my logon information can't be matched?

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